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“She didn’t think to take me with her like yours did,” Bryony said with an edge of bitterness. “It sounds to me like some part of you never got free of Harrow.”

“Or maybe I’m just horrible and repulsive,” I said. She didn’t laugh.

“The Harrow Witch is immune to the manipulations of Harrow and the dark soul,” she said. “That’s one thing you can be sure of. What I feel is my own. I’ll promise you that, at least. If you ever need to be certain of someone, you can come find me.”

“So that I can be certain you genuinely don’t like me?” I asked.

“Maybe a certain enemy is better than an untrustworthy friend,” Bryony suggested.

“I don’t know if we’re enemies,” I protested, and smiled, trying to make it a joke.

“Neither do I,” she said simply. She stepped back, away from the folly, her hand falling away from the stone. “But I’m interested to find out.”

She didn’t say goodbye, just walked away. I stared after her, my thoughts tangled up in her final words. As she disappeared amid the trees, the faint strains of singing reached me.

“There was a maiden, golden-haired,

Came to the fold, came to the fold.”

It was the song I’d heard her singing in my dream.

11

THE WEEK AFTERI visited the folly, Mom and Simon left to pack up our house and take care of a few things. Her old boss had talked her into working a couple weeks while they found a replacement since the first person they’d hired had turned out to be a complete flake. Part of me was relieved that they were leaving. I was pretty sure they were safer away from here. And so when Mom had fretted and suggested she stay, I’d insisted that she go.

Desmond called when I was back in my room after seeing them off. The phone had barely started to buzz before I snatched it up. “Tell me you cracked it,” I said.

“Well, hello, cousin,” he drawled. “Lovely to hear from you. Have I thanked you for taking time out of your busy academic schedule to help me decipher a totally unhinged journal?”

“Yup, all of that,” I said.

He snorted. “Fine, fine. I’ll come up with some sufficiently elaborate penance for taking me for granted later. I cracked it, I think. It’s not as simple as I was hoping, which is why it took me so long. It’s really slow going. But I’ve got the first couple pages done. I’ll send them over. They’re pretty wild.”

“I owe you,” I said with feeling.

“I’ll take a cool million—how’s that?” he suggested.

“Deal.” We laughed, and I said goodbye and hung up. I waited eagerly for the chime of the arriving document and opened it immediately.

Most people live their entire lives within the confines of the world we know. I might have as well if I had not met Annalise. For it is through her eyes that I have glimpsed the worlds that lie beyond our own and what dwells there.

If I had not met Annalise, I would never have known of the vast dark and the god that dwells within it. I would never have sought out my good friend, Dr.Samuel Raymond, an expert and visionary in the field of transcendental medicine, and with him devised a means for a human being to look upon the very face of that god.

Soon, we will begin this undertaking in earnest. I have never been one to keep a record of my life; I prefer my thoughts remain private. But someday, great men will look back on us as their forebearers, as the pioneers who changed the world, and they will want to know how we accomplished our great deeds. And so, with care and necessary secrecy, I make this record.

Desmond wasn’t wrong to describe him as unhinged, I thought. But then I wondered—could I be so sure? Gods and monsters and ghosts. The trouble with knowing that there was something beyond the natural realm was not knowing the limits of it.

Maybe there were other worlds and gods—or beings that a man like Nicholas Vaughan would call gods.

The next section was a pair of entries, dated about a week apart.

Annalise dreams nightly of the dark god, and when she embarks on her otherworldly jaunts, she unerringly finds herself beneath the black stars of that realm. I am eager to have Dr.Raymond witness one of her sessions in person, as he has only heard them described before, and I believe that it will allow him to refine his procedure.

The entry continued with details about itineraries and weather and other things that might be of interest to historians but didn’t help me at all, including a long digression about the meal fare at various inns. (Nick wasn’t a fan.)

There was only one more entry, and it was, I noted with disappointment, extremely short. But when I read it, a strange, unsettled feeling rippled through me.

Dr.Raymond has arrived. He brings with him his ward, a young woman called Mary Beaumont, whose existence I was unaware of until she appeared at our doorstep. She is a delicate little thing, with black hair and soft dark eyes, large as a doe’s. I asked Dr.Raymond if she had some ability of her own, as I was struck with the presence within those dark orbs, but he only laughed and denied it. Still, I wonder. The way she looks at me...